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Ben
Ben

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Do Developers Need Project Management Skill?

Project Management

Project Management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing the work of a team.

Technical Skill

Technical Skill is the abilities and knowledge needed to perform specific tasks.

Questions

  • Do developers need project management skill?
  • How do you study project management?
  • Why do some Project Managers think the coding is easy after they get promised to Project Manager?

Top comments (20)

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mandarvaze profile image
Mandar Vaze • Edited

Do Developers Need Project Management Skill?

It definitely helps.

For a junior developer, someone who is just "starting" (couple of years) - focusing on PM skills may not be the best choice.

After one has solid Technical skills, one may be "automatically" given parts of responsibility, even if no one "calls" them PM.

When that happens (and it will) it is the best time to practice PM skills.

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imben1109 profile image
Ben

Any example for PM skills

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mandarvaze profile image
Mandar Vaze

Break down your own tasks into design, coding, testing etc.

Estimate time for each (Initially estimates will go wrong, but that is OK)

See if you "missed" any steps (Documentation? Deployment?)

See if any of the "parts" can be done in parallel. (For your own work, it won't help in execution. But practice assessing it, so when you have to estimate for say 3 people, this practice will be helpful.)

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mandarvaze profile image
Mandar Vaze

Feel free to checkout articles under #projectmanagement here on dev.to

dev.to/t/projectmanagement

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theaccordance profile image
Joe Mainwaring

You can get by without having a skill in project management; I know plenty of devs who are content focusing on spec implementation. However, if you have any ambitions to be the lead on an epic or project, you'll need to have the skill. This applies to both solo development (freelance, contract) and collaborative team situations.

There's a bunch of books and courses online that can help you with the basics of PM. Once you have the fundamentals understood, the best study guide IMO is practice, practice, and more practice.

I can't speak for other PMs, but for me, elevating to the role forced me to "take ownership" of the codebase, and resulted in me having significantly greater understanding of the codebase. This in turn allows me to more quickly traverse the codebase when debugging, understand implications from changes, etc.

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imben1109 profile image
Ben

A silly question. How can i practice without an opportunity.

Therefore, we should try whenever we can have an opportunity

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theaccordance profile image
Joe Mainwaring

Keep in mind, Project Management is nothing more than taking a larger task, breaking it down into smaller pieces, and then keeping track of each part's progress so you're aware of the project's progress as a whole.

As far as opportunity: You'll have to create some for yourself until others offer you the chance. Start with a personal project - doesn't even have to be related to development. If your project was painting a house, you could break the project as a whole into individual tasks for each room. You could then assess the project as a whole by the current progress of each individual task.

For development projects: When in doubt, create yourself a portfolio/resume. Build a website using your skills to showcase your skills. Think about how you want to market yourself, then divide and conquer.

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cagta profile image
Çağatay
  • Not necessary but it would increase your productivity in general.
  • I read and try to discovery other people's best practices. And it includes every types of management, I don't only follow project managers. Management is more general concept than we think.
  • I think it depends on people. Not every project manager thinks like that.
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marcus profile image
Marcus M

1.) It's not necessary, but extremely helpful if you have the skill or know at least the basics. You get a much better view of the projects and the parts of it, which often translates into a better structure of the product.

2.) There are a lot of online courses. It also helps to learn by doing it yourself (with a small hobby-project).

3.) I think that's because they had experience with coding and think "this is the way i would do it". But that rarely works because of project specs or framework choices that block their solutions. What I mean is whipping a a plan is easy, implementing it is hard.

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jfrankcarr profile image
Frank Carr

I think it can help but it isn't absolutely necessary unless you want to move into management or project management. A lot of developers do make this move due to the pressure to advance one's career in a management direction.

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gdahboy profile image
gdahboy

i don't think that you need to study something like that , it something you need to get with reading about management and by practise it !!

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imben1109 profile image
Ben • Edited

What is the difference of "studying" and "get with reading about management and by practise it"

I think it is just one way to study project management.

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gdahboy profile image
gdahboy

studying is by applying to some sort of class , but reading is just some nice books on every night it's a little bit easier i think

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imben1109 profile image
Ben • Edited

I think or I guess you misunderstand the meaning of the word "Study". Haha

Definition of study - the devotion of time and attention to gaining knowledge of an academic subject, especially by means of books, a detailed investigation.

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gdahboy profile image
gdahboy

aaa ok , now i see .
so my point is that we need to study it at least a bit ...

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imben1109 profile image
Ben

Haha

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niorad profile image
Antonio Radovcic

I learned a lot just by observing the management-layers of the projects I was involved in and asking/thinking about the motives for their actions.

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imben1109 profile image
Ben

Did they reply you?

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niorad profile image
Antonio Radovcic

Sure.

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imben1109 profile image
Ben

How do you study project management?